Padres General Manager Josh Byrnes retains the right and maintains the will to find another starting pitcher, but it certainly appears the 2013 version of the local team is a virtual replica of the 2012 version of the local team.

These are your Padres.

That’s for better or worse.

Given last year’s horrific start and incomprehensible succession of injuries, it could hardly be worse. And spring optimism springing eternal as it does, there is reason to believe it’s for the better.

But again, this is when we believe everything.

Honestly, if you ever were offered the chance to live in spring training, take that chance without hesitation. Democrats and Republicans, husbands and wives, cats and dogs … what a wonderful place this world would be if we all lived spring training.

“During spring training, everyone is optimistic about where you’re at and evaluating your team,” said Will Venable, one half of the Padres right field tandem. “But you have to think about it -- we have literally the same, exact team coming back this year.”

His point being that optimism is justified here, because the Padres were quite the team in the second half (plus five games) of 2012.

After a 27-49 start that was second-worst in the majors, their 49-37 run from June 28 on was fifth-best in the National League. The four teams that finished hotter than the Padres all played in the postseason.

“It’s a good thing we got a taste of what it’s like to win some baseball games,” pitcher Clayton Richard said.

But what does then mean for now? Does getting a taste of the good stuff do to them what it does to wild animals, making them exist essentially only to continue getting that taste? Or were the final 3½ months of last season destined to be nothing more than a fruitless tease?

Let’s not forget that the Padres were at one point early in July still on a franchise-record 109-loss pace and did their winning long after they’d been all but freed of the expectation they’d do so.

They also lost eight of their final 12 games, by that time out of healthy bodies and exhausted, so sustaining momentum through a winter is certainly not a given.

One year’s good finish doesn’t automatically become the next year’s good start.

“We’re not assuming we just have to copy and paste,” Byrnes said.

But it is at least encouraging to know the team the Padres can be. It means something more that they say they can be good when they actually have been for at least a time.

We no longer have to squint and concentrate really hard to imagine they can score. The Padres averaged almost 1½ more runs per game in those final 86 games than they had through the first 76. They scored more than three runs 52 times in the final 86 after doing so just 28 times in the first 76. With a more set (healthy) lineup, they batted 30 points higher, averaged almost a home run a game and got on base a full 10 percent more frequently.